Page 141

He found himself nodding woodenly to the garrulous old man.

Brashen was beginning to suspect that the mate who had sent him here had been having a bit of fun with him.

Still, here he was, and it was quiet and clean and quite likely a better place to entertain Althea than a crowded, noisy tavern.

‘I’ll be heading out back to take a bath then,’ he announced when the landlord paused for breath.

‘Oh, and a shipmate of mine may be coming here to meet me. He’ll be asking for Brashen.

That’s me. The lad is named Athel. Would you bid him wait for me? ’

‘Aye, I’ll let him know you’re here.’ The landlord paused. ‘Not a carouser, is he? Not the type to come in here drunk and spew on my floor and knock over my benches, is he?’

‘Athel? No indeed, not him. No indeed.’ Brashen beat a hasty retreat out the back door.

In a small shed set in a cobbled yard, he found the water pump, a bath trough and a fireplace as the landlord had promised.

Like the rooming house, the pumphouse was almost excessively tidy.

But the several rough towels that hung on pegs looked clean, if well-used, and the trough did not show a ring of some other man’s grease.

Just as well, Brashen told himself, to stay at a clean place.

He pumped several buckets of water and put them to heat.

His shore-clothes were in the bottom of his duffel.

They were clean, though smelling a bit musty.

He hung out his striped shirt and stockings and good woollen trousers to air near the fireplace.

There was a pot of soft-soap and he helped himself to it.

He took off several layers of grease and salt and possibly a layer of skin as well before he was finished.

For the first time in weeks he took his hair out of its braid, washed it well and then bound it back again.

He would have liked to lie and soak in the tub, but he didn’t want to keep Althea waiting.

So he rose and dried himself and trimmed his beard back to its former shape and donned his clean shore-clothes.

Such a treat to put on clean, warm, dry clothes over clean, warm, dry skin.

The bath had left him almost lethargic, but that was nothing that a good meal and a cold mug of beer wouldn’t cure.

He stuffed his dirty clothes back in his sea-bag and did a quick tidy of the room.

Tomorrow, he’d find a laundry to have all his clothes washed out, save for those so tarry as to be hopeless.

Feeling a new man, he went back to the main house to have a meal and wait for Althea.

She had never been in a foreign port alone before.

Always before, she had had shipmates and a ship to return to when the night grew dark.

It was not late afternoon yet, but the day suddenly seemed both more chill and more grey.

She looked around herself yet again. The world was suddenly an edgeless, formless place.

No ship, no duties, no family ties. Only the coin in her pocket and the duffel on her back to concern her.

A strange mixture of feelings suddenly assailed her; she felt at once forlorn and alone, devastated at their refusal to give her a ticket, and yet oddly powerful and independent.

Reckless. That was the word. It seemed there was nothing she could do that would make things worse than they already were.

She could do anything she wanted just now, and answer to no one, for no one else would care.

She could get shamelessly drunk or spend every coin she had on a sybaritic night of food, wine, music and exotic surroundings.

Of course there was tomorrow to worry about, but one always had to reckon with tomorrow.

And if she chose to slam into one head first, there was no one to forbid it, or to say shame to her the next day.

It wasn’t as if careful planning had paid off well for her lately.

She gave a final heist to her bag and then deliberately set her cap at a jauntier angle.

She strode down the street, taking in every detail of the town.

This close to the waterfront, it was ship’s brokers and chandlers and cheap seaman’s boarding houses, interspersed with taverns, whorehouses, gaming rooms and druggeries.

It was a rough section of town for a rough pack of folk. And she was part of them now.

She chose a tavern at random and went inside.

It looked no different from the taverns in Bingtown.

The floor was strewn with reeds, not very fresh.

Trestle tables bore ancient ring stains from many mugs.

The benches looked much mended. The ceilings and walls were dark with oily smoke from cooking and lamps.

There was a large fireplace at one end of the room, and there the sailors had gathered thickest, close to the warmth and the smell of stew.

There was a tavern keeper, a lean, mournful looking man and a gaggle of serving maids, some sullen, some giggly.

A staircase at the back led up to rooms above.

The conversational roar pushed at her as solidly as a wind.

She found a spot at a table, not as close to the fire as she wished, but still much warmer than it had been outside, or in the forecastle of the ship.

She set her back to the wall at the mostly empty table.

She got a mug of beer that was surprisingly good, and a bowl of stew that was badly seasoned, but still a vast improvement over ship’s food.

The chunk of bread that went with it more than made up for it.

It had not been out of the oven for more than a few hours.

It was dark and thick with grain and chewy.

She ate slowly, savouring the warmth, the food, and the beer, refusing to think of anything else.

She considered getting a room upstairs, but the thumps, thuds, shrieks and laughter that drifted down the staircase made her aware that the rooms were not intended for sleeping.

One tavern maid approached her half-heartedly, but Althea simply pretended not to understand.

The girl seemed as glad to go on her way.

She wondered how long one had to be a whore before one got tired of it.

Or used to it. She found her hand had gone to her belly and was touching the ring through her shirt.

Whore, the captain had called her, and said she’d brought the serpents down on the ship.

Ridiculous. But that was how they had seen her.

She took a bite of her bread and looked around the room and tried to imagine what it would be like to randomly offer herself to the men there in hopes of money.

They were a rancid lot, she decided. The sea might make a man tough, but for the most part, it also made him ugly.

Missing teeth, missing limbs, hands and faces weathered dark as much by tar and oil as by wind and sun; there were few men there that appealed to her.

Those that were young and comely and well-muscled were neither clean nor mannered.

Perhaps, she reflected, it was the oil trade.

Hunting and killing and rendering, blood and salt and oil made up their days.

The sailors on the merchant vessels had been cleaner, she thought.

Or perhaps only the ones on the Vivacia.

Her father had pushed the men to be clean to keep the vessel free of vermin as well.

Thinking of Vivacia and her father did not hurt as much as it once had.

Hopelessness had replaced the pain. She brought her mind about and sailed straight into the thought she’d been refusing.

It was going to be damn close to impossible to ever get a ship’s ticket in her name.

All because she was a woman. The defeat that washed abruptly over her almost sickened her.

The food in her belly was suddenly a sour weight.

She found she was trembling as if she were cold.

She pressed her feet against the floor, and set her hands to the edge of the table to still them.

I want to go home, she thought miserably.

Somewhere that I am safe and warm and people know me.

But no, home was none of those things, not any more.

The only place those things existed for her was in the past, back when her father had been alive and the Vivacia had been her home.

She reached for those memories, but found them hard to summon.

They were too distant, she was too disconnected from them.

To long for them only made her more alone and hopeless.

Brashen, she thought suddenly. He was as close to home as she could get in this dirty town.

Not that she intended to seek him out, but it suddenly occurred to her that she could.

That was something she could do, if she wanted to, if she wanted to be reckless and truly care nothing about tomorrow.

She could find Brashen, and for a few hours, she could feel warm and safe.

The thought was like the smell of a well-laden table to a starving man.